These instructions were put together by Ouglee over on the WD forums. This copy is mainly just to make my life easier in case things go astray. If only because when hacking My Cloud I’ve needed these a few times.
If you think you have bricked your WD My Cloud or are getting a lot of errors, Do not turn it off a lot of the time running processes will be fine so you should be able to copy all your data off first. Once you’ve power cycled it if it doesn’t come back retrieving all that data is far more hassle.
Also there were some differences in what I saw and did which I’ll note here.
- When running gparted make a note of the end of your data partition as it saves time later on
- In step 16 I was asked for an “end” as well as a start.
Also I didn’t get a warning about the partition size so use either the end point you noted when running gparted or that was given in parted by the pcommand.
I suspect this is due to a difference in versions of the rescue CD. - If you WD My Cloud refuses to see the full size SSH into it once it’s back up and happy(ish) and carry out the commands from step 16 but when asked for the end point you can say “-0” to specify the end of the disk.
- On one occasion (yes I bricked it a few times) I had to powercycle it twice after completing these steps before it came back
BIG credits and thanks go to cnlinya for her work in the beginning of 2014, nfodiz for his MyBook Live guide, and resize fix, and WSGVET for his virgin 2TB My Cloud image. None of this was possible without their input.
Standard disclaimer: You void your warranty by doing anything in this post. I (and the above named) are not responsible if you lose your data, bork your drive, or otherwise cause the end of your universe. Back up your data. Give to the homeless. Hug a stranger.
It should be mentioned, this guide is a LAST RESORT to repair your My Cloud.
THESE STEPS WILL RESULT IN THE LOSS OF ALL USER DATA. YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.
Needed stuff to download:
Needed hardware:
- 8GB+ USB Drive (formatted NTFS)
- Blank CD/Burner
- Credit Card, or slim-tip screwdriver
- Philips Head Screwdriver
- PC with SATA connections (You can try SATA-> USB converters, but I won’t get into them here)
What To Do<
- Burn the SystemRescueCD.
- Unzip the Virgin Image, and copy the mycloud2tb.img file to the USB Drive.
- Disassemble your My Cloud.
- Pop the CD, the USB Drive, and the WD Hard Drive into the PC. (It is recommended you disconnect any other drives, avoid confusion.) Boot off the CD.
- Choose option 7 (Directly start the graphical environment). Tap enter when its looking for a keyboard map.
- Type ‘gparted’ in the terminal window, and use it to determine what devices are what.(click GParted, and change devices) Take note of your Hard Drive (usually /dev/sda) and your USB Drive (mine was /dev/sdb). The partitions/sizes should be a big hint, especially if you have no other drives connected.
- Close gparted, and enter the following commands in the terminal window:
mkdir /mnt/usb
mount -t ntfs /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb
ls /mnt/usb
- ‘mycloud2tb.img’ should be the result. Time to overwrite everything…
dd if=/mnt/usb/mycloud2tb.img of=/dev/sda - Be patient. Your hard drive is being overwritten and that takes some time. Your result should be
10240000+0 records in
10240000+0 records out
5242880000 bytes (5.2 GB) copied, xxx.xxx s, xx.x MB/s. - If you have a 2TB My Cloud, skip to step 18. Otherwise, continue.
- Shutdown and reboot the CD. I’m not sure you need to, but it was necessary for me, so its in here. Same options as before, until you have a terminal window.
- parted
- Enter the following commands in the (parted) prompts:
unit s
p
Error: The backup GPT table is corrupt, but the primary appears OK, so that will be used. OK/Cancel?
OK - Warning: Not all the space available to /dev/sda appears to be used, you can fix the GPT to use all of the space (an extra 39070080000 blocks) or continue with the current setting?
Fix - We’re looking for the start sector of the last partition (4). I would think it would be the same on 3TB and 4TB, but I can only speak for the 4TB, which is 9428992.
rm 4
mkpart primary
File system type? [ext2]?
ext4
Start?
9428992s
Warning: You requested a partition from 9428992s to 7814037167s (sectors 9428992..7814037167).
The closes location we can manage is 9428992s to 7814037134s (sectors 9428992..7814037132).
Is this acceptable to you
Yes/No?
Yes
quit - Back to the command prompt..
sync - Shutdown the PC, and (loosely) reassemble your My Cloud to its mini-board. Time to boot it and try it out!
- (3TB/4TB Drives) Once you get to the dashboard, do a Quick Factory Restore. This reformats your data partition for the full size. Once it reboots, DON’T PANIC. It will show as only 2GB for a short time… eventually, it’ll wise up.
Remember, that first boot can take a while… I even had the flashing yellow light come on the first time (overheat warning?), but I power cycled it and it came right up, no problems. Don’t forget to put it back together!
ver 1.0